Print-on-Demand
Publishing Works for You
by Otto Barz
Have you written a book? Does one of your
clients need information published? There are now a number
of Print-on-Demand (POD) publishers who will, for a modest
fee, prepare your text in fully professional book format,
including editing, if that's desired, and publish it. The
book will look like any other book you've ever held in your
hands, replete with four-color slick cover and professionally
designed and typeset pages.
It will have all it needs for the marketplace,
too: ISBN number, Library of Congress number and barcode;
you will find a picture of its cover on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com,
Borders.com and other website sellers; and, it will appear
in Books in Print, where bookstores go to
find any book that's published in the United States. Buying
your book isn't a special effort for the stock purchaser
at the bookstore either, because many POD publishers make
their books available through Ingram, the country's largest
book wholesaler, where virtually all bookstores purchase
wholesale all the time.
What makes POD publishers different from traditional
publishers? Books are printed and bound one at a time, and
shipped within forty-eight hours of ordering! There's no
need to fund inventory. New publishing technologies make
it feasible to wait until a book is ordered and paid for
before manufacturing it. One can appreciate the savings
in not having to invest in inventory and its management.
Surprisingly, POD manufacturing is only a
little more costly than printing and binding in large volume.
The savings gained in the absence of inventory and warehousing
costs permit POD publishers to sell books at prices competitive
to those produced by conventional means.
Traditional publishers have been slammed in
the last few decades for not properly serving "midlist"
authors--those whose books will sell only a few thousand
copies. Traditional publishers generally reserve ten percent
of the list price of the book for publicity, promotion,
and advertising. For a $19.95 book that's projected to sell
2000 copies in its lifetime, roughly $4,000 would be spent
on publicity, advertising, and promotion. Is it a surprise
that the prophecy is fulfilled, and only 2000 copies really
end up being sold?
The publisher also knows that if it spends
only half of that budgeted amount, there will probably be
no measurable difference in sales. So, it diverts money
into campaigns for the few books on its list where market
penetration can be affected. These, of course, are generally
pre-sold, high-potential, "name-brand" books or
authors. This makes good business sense, and is good for
a few authors. But, it's no use at all to the vast majority
of authors whose books are not big sellers.
There's no magic in POD except to enable a
new philosophy of publishing and a more rational, more productive
way to deploy funds. Some POD publishers spend virtually
no money in promoting sales for its authors and, instead,
give authors more in royalties.
The net result of the savings in inventory
and marketing costs and the new technologies enable a new
approach for book publishing. Competently written books,
even if they don't match market formulas, can now reach
the marketplace and serve small but interested groups of
readers.
Otto Barz is president of Publishing
Synthesis, Ltd., which has edited and typeset books
for traditional publishers since 1975, and president of
YBK Publishers,
Inc., which was established in 1999.
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